Description
The foundations of the SAS function as an origin myth, where ideologies of masculinity, violence, and elite soldiering come into being. These foundational myths matter because they frame the possibilities and thus practices of elite soldiering. First this article identifies the key foundational myths; the ‘band of brothers’ made up of misfits brought together and formed under intense physical and mental process under the desert sun to create the hardened and singularly resilient masculine super soldier. A myth that has continued to inform the selection and training regimes of Special forces units internationally. I then re-tell the story and in particular focus on the origins of the SAS as a place of love, of cross-dressing, a dessert camp of homosexual, not simply homo-social becomings. I do this not to ‘out’ any of the men involved, or indeed to suggest this is a more ‘accurate’ version of the story, but rather to consider what it might mean to draw out this latent theme in this origin story, and to think how this can be a route to (re)encounter military masculinities and queer military studies.
